Why is the Republican Party incapable of putting up a fight? And why is Hillary Clinton “inevitable”?

The Juggernaut Advances

Wikipedia defines an unstoppable force. “A juggernaut in colloquial English usage is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as mercilessly destructive and unstoppable. The term is a metaphorical reference to the Hindu Ratha Yatra temple car … ‘a huge wagon bearing an image of a Hindu god’ is from the 17th century, inspired by the Jagannath Temple”.

The first European description of this festival is found in the 14th-century The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which apocryphally describes Hindus, as a religious sacrifice, casting themselves under the wheels of these huge chariots and being crushed to death. …

The term is often applied to a large machine … or even a growing political movement led by a charismatic leader — and it often bears an association with being crushingly destructive.

The festival of the Jagganath, according to JT Young in Forbes, is repeated every two years in America in biennial elections where voters are treated to the spectacle of the “Party that Can’t Win” ritually throwing itself under the wheels of the giant Democratic Party machine as if to appease some mighty god.

Whether the subject is Benghazi, IRS, immigration, the NSA or Syria the GOP performance is shockingly repetitive. First it pauses before the mighty onset, makes a show of defiance. Then it fires off a few desultory arrows at the advancing political machine and disappears under the grinding wheels, a muffled cry of “aieeee” barely audible over the triumphant roar of the Democratic devotees.

“Republicans need to ask what’s wrong with our business model,” said former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), after a loss in Virginia. “This should have been a slam dunk. Virginia almost always votes against the president’s party…. All we needed was a mammal up there.”

A mammal and a business model, as Davis should remind himself.

But just what is the current Republican business model? It really resembles the business model of the Washington Generals, an exhibition basketball team. The job of the Generals is to play second fiddle to the Harlem Globetrotters. There is logic in this.

Losing is not a bad deal if the the loser’s purse is bigger than the expected value of the winners pay packet outside the deal. Since it is the Globetrotters, not the Generals, that drive the total size of the revenue, it makes sense to accept second-best. The bigger the audience the Globetrotters attract the bigger the losers’ purse of the Washington Generals. It is rational for the Generals to aim for a smaller slice of as long as the Trotters keep growing the pie.

The pie in Washington DC is the size of the Federal Government, which the Republicans, avowedly the party of small government, cannot grow or grow as quickly as the Democrats. It makes sense to enter into a symbiotic relationship where like the Globetrotters, the Democrats will tirelessly expand the size of the Federal Government so that even if the GOP only gets to sit its turn 40% of the time, the feast is over an expended empire of spoils. The losers’ pay packet is pretty good.

The post World War II era has been a golden age of government spending, and it shows no sign of ending. Although spending dropped back to 21 percent of GDP immediately after WWII, it steadily climbed thereafter until it hit a peak of 36 percent of GDP in the bottom of the recession of 1980-82. Thereafter government spending chugged along in the mid 30s until the mortgage meltdown of 2008. In the aftermath of bank and auto bailouts, government spending surged to wartime levels at 45 percent of GDP. The mortgage emergency seems to have ratcheted out-year spending up a notch. Near term government spending in the future is pegging at 40 percent of GDP.

The reason why the GOP business model is in crisis is that the audience is beginning to suspect the game is fixed. Nobody can plausibly run on “Republican principles” any more. Pledges to cut the bloated bureaucracy, close the borders to illegal immigration or put a stop to endless expansion have a ring of insincerity. Ticket sales are slumping. And the Trotters aren’t even pretending to take the Generals seriously.

How long can they keep up the draw? Ted Cruz and the Tea Party represent the recognition that the old way of doing business is fading fast. They represent a counterproposal to exit the current Republican business model and create a new start-up. This is enormously risky for the institutional GOP since there is no guarantee the startup and business model will work. By contrast, whatever the faults of the current system it still sort of works. You can still be Chris Christie, John Boehner, or John McCain. But you can’t be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. The argument goes that this is the best you can do, so deal with it. Would you risk resigning your job with the Generals to book a stadium across town and play to an uncertain audience?

That depends on the perception of where the political industry going. The Democrats are betting it will continue as before. The “invincibility” of Hillary is predicated on the belief that she represents the “inevitable” fulfillment of the “progressive” agenda of ever growing government. The contrary argument is that the progressive market expansion has run its course. The bubble is at its peak. Government share of GDP is already at 40% and there’s no way for it to go but down.

Hence the strategic argument for changing the GOP business model is that the market for the old product is in terminal decline; that it is time to exit that old product line and start a new one. To do this a political movement must run the risk, even accept the probability of going bust. Whenever you exit a business — even a declining one — there is always the danger that you are jumping from the fat into the fire.

But it’s been done before. Perhaps the most familiar example of such a radical political shift was in 1776, when a group of American politicians decided to exit the game of playing Second Best under what was then the greatest empire in the world — a pretty good deal all things considered — and attempted to carve their own way in the world.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends….

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

And it very nearly didn’t work, as those who study its history know. Hindsight makes it easier to sympathize with those who wanted to keep the old arrangements in place, as did Canada and Australia. Those countries didn’t do so badly. But in the long view of history it is impossible to foresee how things finally work out.

One hundred and sixty four years after the American colonies left the mighty British Empire it saved the old lion which was itself near to death under the Nazi boot. In May, 1940 Winston Churchill was barely holding on. And then deliverance came: receiving news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill exulted “so we have won after all!” Won, he might have added, by the circumstance of an enterprise begun on July the Fourth, on the pledge of lives, fortune and sacred honor.

So why is Hillary inevitable? Is it because the game of second best, despite all its faults, remains the best practical choice? Or is it because nobody in the political universe has the guts to tell Hillary that “nothing is written”. As with the saga of the British Empire the continued survival of the America’s institutions may ultimately depend, not on those who stay inside the Beltway, but on the rebels outside of it. If the old model is doomed then it’s the startup, it is the oddballs who will in retrospect be credited with the salvation of the enterprise. When a model starts to fail most of the information relevant to its reform lies in the outliers and not in the enforced median.

It’s tempting to think that the Founding Fathers knew how their big risk would play out. That they had some guarantee from God, some Risk Corridor agreement with the Creator. But they didn’t. They bet everything on something no one had ever heard of before: the United States of America. We know how things worked out only because we live in the present. JRR Tolkien observed that the past is only seems inevitable in hindsight, like reading the Hobbit only after you’ve finished the Lord of the Rings.

Yet things might have gone far otherwise and far worse. When you think of the Battle of Pelennor, do not forget the battles in Dale and the valor of Durin’s Folk. Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador, night in Rivendell. There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash. But that has been adverted — because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of spring in Bree. A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle-earth.

But none of the characters described in the Book knew how the Tale would end. And in that world of chance meetings, Hillary is not inevitable. And nothing is written.

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If you have it right, Wretchard, and I believe you do, every two years the Republicans walk past the graveyard whistling Sweet Georgia Brown. The problem is, the graveyard is looking more and more like the country I used to know.

See them tombstones see them headstonesSweet Georgia BrownSee the names there’s WashingtonWho toppled the CrownOver there, there’s JeffersonAnd old John Paul JonesNo body to mournSo sad and forlornSee them tombstones and them headstonesSweet Georgia BrownLook at them they’re all neglectedToppled and downDon’t nobody careOur country lies there?See them headstones see them tombstonesSweet Georgia Brown

Wretchard, you are a much kinder soul than I. Maybe it is because I spent my working life dealing with felons, both as targets of my professional attentions, and occasionally above me in the chain of command. We do share a love of the study of history, but I have absorbed a far more cynical viewpoint of my fellow man, perhaps, than you.

You have the dynamic of purposeful subordination of the Republicans to the Left down pat. However, you have missed or discounted what I, and I suspect many others have detected. Not only are the Nomenklatura of the Institutional Republicans accepting of this status, they are active collaborators with, and willing subordinates of, the Left. The Democrats are NOT the enemy of the Institutionals; they are the head office and the Institutionals are the farm team hoping to be brought up to the big leagues of graft and corruption.

They are more than willing to lose to the Democrats, they are eager to lose to the Democrats; and especially if a Democrat victory takes down a Conservative, a TEA Party member, or other Patriot they will deliberately throw the election. They ARE the enemy, and staying with them is like being a monk or nun in a theoretical Catholic Church that has somehow elected the "Occluded 12th Imam" as the Pope.

We leave, or we and our country will find ourselves in a "bipartisan" run GULAG.

As far as the inevitability of Hillary is concerned; that is dependent on the assumption that Constitutional and electoral forms are followed. The Constitution is being gutted before our eyes, the rule of law is dependent solely on who you are connected to, and Democrat precincts that vote far over 100% of their population at 100% for the Democrat are unremarkable.

This combination, the creation of an electronic dossier on every citizen, plus the militarization of the entire Executive Branch aimed at the civilian population may be something that Buraq Hussein is building with the generous intent of letting his Leftist successor wield them to hold power forever. But, I for one, have not seen any sign of such a giving spirit, and more than suspect that he intends to use these conditions himself. For as long as he can.

They represent a counterproposal to exit the current Republican business model and create a new start-up. This is enormously risky for the institutional GOP since there is no guarantee the startup and business model will work.

Both action and inaction poses risks. The institutional GOP model has failed every where it has been tried. Even in "victory", the GOP-e sows the seeds of it's next, more dramatic defeat (e.g. G.W. Bush's win in 2000 set the stage for Obama's win in 2008, and the utter defeat and roll-back of nearly every conservative gain in the 20th century. Bush (#41) and Dole's defeats rolled back much of Reagan's gains. McCain and Romney's, the rest of Reagan's and any of all of Bush's (#43). What do Bush (#41), Dole, McCain, and Romney have in common? 3 of 4 were out and out social liberals and minimally fiscal conservatives, and while Bush #41 was more conservative than the other three, he represented the "moderate", institutional portion of the Reagan/Bush ticket. Bush (#43), of course, was a war time President who appeared to compromise all else to the cause of the war (which was hijacked by State Department progressives, ensuring no clear win, and setting the stage for today's losses under the much weaker, current President). However, Bush (#43) was not far removed from his father's blue-blooded, Northeastern progressive Republicans.

Any way you cut it, the GOP-e has been a downhill ride. That is why, when Republicans argue that only a united GOP, conservatives and moderates alike, can win anything in American politics, conservatives such as I reply "why bother"? If the GOP cannot win, AND roll back 100 years of progressive socialism, if a GOP Senate and House cannot act to eliminate hugely wasteful and wholly destructive agencies such as the Departments of Energy and Education, if it cannot reign in out of control agencies such as the outlaw IRS and an EPA, which designates mud puddles as "navigable waterways" to gain uncompensated control of private properties, what good is a "win"?

One thing that Bush #43 said that I wholly agreed with, i.e. political capital should be spent and used, wisely for certain, but unused political capital is perishable. If the GOP is to win, it needs to win on a "Contract with America" type proposition, and both WIN and EXECUTE on that commitment. If the GOP cannot contrast the difference between 8 years of GOP-e governance under Reagan and Bush #43, versus the economic destruction, debt, lost economic opportunity, and LIVES DESTROYED under Clinton and Obama, again, why bother even trying to win?

(Aside: As to the rapid-ready-reply of the progressives that Bush #43 brought about MORE economic lost and hundreds of thousands of lives lost than Obama has, the problem with that argument is two fold:

1) It ignores the true facts that 9/11 was birthed by Clinton's feckless leadership, i.e. the plot was already in progress when Bush #43 took office, and the critical rules preventing the FBI and CIA from sharing foreign intelligence were imposed set by Clinton's Justice department, and

2) Democrats in the Senate stonewalled about 80% of Bush's key appointments under the guise of protesting a "stolen election" (which was another complete fabrication). Clinton's appointees or career civil servants were still running critical agencies and departments on 9/2011, deliberately hindering and retarding the Executive transition of power, and leaving American more vulnerable to risks, such as foreign attacks or terrorism.

The progressive's own 9/11 and the resulting War on Terrorism, plus every ounce of failure, deaths, and destruction that resulted. Democrat/progressive weakness in defense and domestic policy consistently leads the country to war, and likely, will once again within 3 to 4 years.)

Bottom line, the GOP-e has lost any claim to legitimacy. It represents nothing and no one. I certainly do not say that with enthusiasm. To the contrary, it's a national tragedy and real threat to the republic. That is why I have said, and reiterate, that only a new 3rd party has any chance of resurrecting this country from the ashes of progressive socialism, and returning it to the principles of individual freedom, rule of (constitutional) law, human rights (especially private property), and general prosperity. This resurrection cannot happen via "bi-partisan" compromise, nor by some sort of "reform" of the Republican "big tent" party. It could happen as a result of a revolution or civil war, such as in 1776 and 1860, but that's probably the most desperate, costly way of restoring the nation.

There really is no other way than to do what Lincoln and his compatriots did in 1860, with the birth of a new, principled party they called the "Grand Old Party", replacing the thoroughly corrupt and irrelevant Whigs, and in counterpoint to the then Southern dominated Democrat Party. The healing and restoration of t

By the way, I think that ONE act Hillary performed as SECSTATE was even worse than her answer to the Benghazi question.

On the subject of the Keystone pipeline she said, basically, "These things take time. Coordination with other countries is a slow process."

In other words, she said, "We have an e'ffed up ossified bureaucracy at State and I have neither the skills not the interest nor the time to go kick some ass and get these career pigs who slop at the government trough off their well upholstered backsides and moving in the right direction! For God's sake, I am busy being Phineas Fogg! You think it's easy running all over the world at a speed designed to look good but not accomplish anything? And, look, I'm a DEMOCRAT! We build bureaucracies and make them work slower! How else do you think we can get all those Feral Govt workers to give us so many campaign contributions? So screw your damn pipeline! All you piss ants can friggin' walk!"

Six year old children hauled off to jail for shaping cookies with their baby teeth into dangerous shapes, two generations cursing a third for not only ‘stealing’ their future, but refusing to surrender their jobs to the needy, and a voting population that thinks their task is to vote for the winner whoever he may be.

Women, children, unemployed, dependents, criminals, addicts, uneducated, idiots and politicians are all granted the unrestricted right to vote and vote they do, the consequences be damned. We ought to be proud of ourselves, look at the abuse we can heap upon ourselves and still we continue to function.

Finally, union activists determine what our children will be taught, when they will be taught and how they will be taught. Now, killing a murderer is cruel and unusual punishment while killing our babies is a god-given right.

Buddy;I could only listen to 30 seconds worth of that shrew! I can't decide which she needs most, a padded cell or a jail cell . All politicians need to be automatically retired after no more than 3 for the house or 2 for the senate lest they become empire builders. Sounds like this one is well on her way.

Monsanto pays hubby, a Clinton pollster, big PR consultant money, DeLauro sponsors and whips thru the House what passed the Senate as 'S510' and was signed into law in 2010. The Food Safety Act --greatest beneficiary, Monsanto natch.

With these sorts of taxpayer-footed public/private ruses, the liitle lady has amassed a $20,000,000 fortune during her stint as as congressperson.

Then she stands there wearing her Merlin cape and makes a stemwinder on the hatefulness of America's 'lack of equality'.

I don't have anything for or against Judge Pirro; I just don't have much time to listen to "talking head" commentators anymore. However, Judge Pirro covers in depth, logically, and legally every argument about Benghazi and State's responsibility that needs to be covered. Yes, huge questions yet remain about whether the decisions were made over Hillary's head, why the U.S. military deployed late or not at all during the attack, but the "buck stops" at State with the Secretary. It was her responsibility to hold parties reporting to her accountable, to ensure safety of the embassy and consulate staffs, to ensure justice if they failed to do their jobs, and to either fall on her sword in behalf of her President, or tell the American people the truth if her commands were overruled by the President.

H. Clinton has done none of these things. She has NOT accepted accountability for Benghazi in any way other than words, and she has not executed her duties as Secretary of State before, during, or in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks.

I feel the same way about H. Clinton related to her dereliction of duty for State Department security and staff in Benghazi as the Swift Boat Vets did about their former fellow Navy Officer, John Kerry. If H. Clinton thinks that Benghazi will not follow her on the Presidential campaign trail, indeed, follow her to her grave, she is deluded. I will not forget, and most Navy Vets (particularly the SEAL/NSWG community) will not forget, the SEALs Obama and H. Clinton abandoned in Benghazi.

H. Clinton, Obama, and their hope and change: From "no man left behind.." to "..what difference does it make...". Enough said.

But she does that, maybe not quite so bitterly sardonically as this one (few topics so readily lend), on every show's A-Bloc (ahem, jargon). She has a target, and she deeeemolishes it. And without a smidgen of debate-crafty spin & deceit.

Every time I read a story about how the Chamber of Commerce stands with those supporting the progressive agenda, I cringe. Main Street America hasn’t benefited from Barack Obama’s take on national socialism and it never will. Main Street is, in fact, the biggest loser in a government organized system that is driven by scale economies. The Dow goes up and up and up even though there are empty storefronts everywhere, because the big boxes and other big businesses are thriving (and, of course, because the death of those small businesses is great news to the really big ones).

The Republican leadership looks to the political middle – in Willie Sutton’s beautiful turn of phrase – because that’s where the money is. The trick is to turn small and midsized businesses against the progressive agenda. The way this would be done is for the conservative leadership to drive a wedge between big business (the 1 Percent, so to speak) and the owners of smaller businesses by hammering on the unfair treatment the latter are receiving. A course correction to the political right wouldn’t be such an iffy proposition if small and midsized businesses were demanding it – and Hilary Clinton wouldn’t seem quite so inevitable.